She displayed the same fine insight when, dinner over, she talked to Louis of his out-door work--especially the whirl and slide of his water. "You will forgive a woman, Monsieur Louis, who is old enough to be your great-grandmother, when she tells you that, fine as your pictures are--and I know of no painter of our time who paints water as well--there are some things in the out of doors which I am sure you will yet put into your canvases. I am a fisherman myself, and have thrashed many of the brooks you have painted, and there is nothing I love so much as to peer down into the holes where the little fellows live--way down among the pebbles and the brown moss and green of the water-plants. Can't we get this--or do I expect the impossible? But if it could be done--if the bottom as well as the surface of the water could be given--would we not uncover a fresh hiding-place of nature, and would not you--you, Monsieur Louis--be doing the world that much greater service?--the pleasure being more ours than yours--your reward being the giving of that pleasure to us. I hope you will all forgive me, but it has been such an inspiration to meet you all. I get so smothered by the commonplace that sometimes I gasp for breath, and then I find some oasis like this and I open wide my soul and drink my fill. "But enough of all this. Let us have something more amusing. Monsieur Brierley, won't you go to the spinet and--" Here she sprang from her chair. "Oh, I forgot all about it, and I put it in my pocket on purpose. Please some one look in my cloak for a roll of music; none of you I know have heard it before. It is an old song of Provence that will revive for you all your memories of the place. Thank you, Monsieur Brierley, and now lift the lid and I will sing it for you." And then there poured from her lips a voice so full and rich, with notes so liquid and sympathetic, that we stood around her in wonder doubting our ears. Never had we found her so charming nor so bewitching, nor so full of enchanting surprises. So uncontrollable were her spirits, always rising to higher flights, that I began at last to suspect that something outside of the inspiration of our ready response to her every play of fancy and wit was accountable for her bewildering mood. The solution came when the coffee was served and fresh candles lighted and Leà and Mignon, with a curtsy to the table and a gentle, furtive good-night to madame, had left the room. Then, quite as if their departure had started another train of thought, she turned and faced our landlord. "What a dear old woman is Leà, Lemois," she began in casual tones, "and what good care she takes of that pretty child; she is mother and sister and guardian to her. But she cannot be everything. There is always some other yearning in a young girl's heart which no woman can satisfy. You know that as well as I do. And this is why you are going to give Mignon to young Gaston. Is it not true?" she added in dissembling tones.